New perspectives on farm household incomes

Traditional farm classification schemes in the European Union are strongly oriented towards the role of the farm business in generating income for the farm household. This is increasingly being viewed as too partial a view of farm households, especially by those concerned with the study of rural household adjustment and survival strategies. The paper presents an approach to the construction of a household income typology. A total of 2200 broadly defined agricultural households in three peripheral regions of the European Union — Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and Greece — are classified into policy relevant typology groups based on the composition of household income and on their total income relative to a Minimum Income Requirement. Associations are made between the typology groups, farm business types and household lifecycles. Although there was significant variation between the three regions, only 28% of the total sample were classified as ‘farm-based’, i.e. generated a household income above the Minimum Income Requirement based mainly on farming. Poor households, i.e. those below the Minimum Income Requirement, represented 44% of the total, or about 50% if the ‘retired’ group is excluded.